The painter Grigore Negoșanu was born in 1885 in the Buzau County, commune of Cănești and begins his artistic training at the School of Fine Arts in Iasi. Here he befriends Nicolae Tonitza, becoming his brother-in-law. Between 1908 and 1912, he completed his artistic education at the Royal Bavarian Academy in Munich, initially specializing in drawing under the guidance of Angelo Jank, and later became one of the favorite students of professor Franz von Stuck. Between 1914 and 1916 he attended drawing and painting classes at the Julian Academy.
After returning to the country he painted successively in Cluj, Bucharest and for four years he was active in the Colony of Baia Mare. Between 1920 and 1924 the painter made an important series of landscapes and scenes of the genre in plein-air, which he also exhibited publicly in several collective exhibitions of the community of artists from Baia Mare. The imprint of his artistic personality was beneficially intertwined with the principles promoted by the stylistic direction of the second traditionalist wave (the years of the decades 1910-1920) of the art evolution in Baia Mare.
The painting of the Baia Mare City Center reveals the atmosphere of the historical center of ’20s. The work is structured on two planes. The first includes the figurative, and the second architecture of the central square inscribed in the scenography of the hills, illustrating the fair atmosphere. The history of the central square begins in the 14th century, coinciding with the late Gothic period. Today’s Piața Libertății retains its old rectangular shape configuration, in the past having the main function of hosting annual fairs. Besides the local merchants, there were also merchants from the country and abroad, as Baia Mare became an important economic center but also a city with a rich mining activity.
